Florence Brown remembers her husband not as the person who lay in a casket at Riplinger Funeral Home but as the man she saw on videotape at his funeral.
Arthur "Bud" Brown was 79 when he passed away but the video played at his July 28 funeral memorialized him through still photographs of his younger, better years.There he was in one picture, flanked by three friends as he sat proudly in the '29 Chevy roadster he used to court his wife.
Cut to a 1952 photo, where the Browns are guests of a housewarming party being thrown by neighborhood merchants on Garland Avenue.
The 6-minute video interspersed the family snapshots with stills of majestic Northwest sunsets, lakes and mountains, and the sequence of pictures is choreographed to the tune of "Just A Closer Walk With Thee," Brown's favorite gospel song.
When it was played on a television monitor at Brown's funeral, the tape lifted the somber mood of the mourners. The television monitor sat on a pedestal behind the coffin.
The memorial video is the brainchild of Merrill Womach, founder and president of National Music Service, a Spokane company that has been providing recorded music and sound systems to funeral homes and mausoleums across the country since 1958.
The concept behind the so-called "Tribute" videos is that a person ought to be remembered not for his death, but for his life and achievements, says Womach, who nearly died in a Thanksgiving day 1961 private plane crash.
Several thousand videos have been sold, most through funeral homes, since the company began marketing the product in April. Among the customers were acquaintances of actress Amanda Blake - Miss Kitty in the television series "Gunsmoke." A "Tribute" video was played on a huge television monitor at her Aug. 24 memorial service in Sacramento, Calif.